PAKISTAN (ANS) -- Massive rains and subsequent flooding in Pakistan has claimed the lives of thousands of people and left 15 millions homeless across the country.

Mother and child affected by floods

According to Faisal Anwer, Chairman of Faith Christian Fellowship Pakistan (FCF), thousands of villages have been submerged into rivers and millions of houses, roads, bridges, as well as standing crops and livestock, have been swept away.

He said that all of the five provinces of the country have been badly affected and the National Pakistan Disaster Management Authority and Meteorological Department have declared it, “the worst disaster in the history of Pakistan and bigger than the 2005 earthquake.”

The chief ministers of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Punjab provinces have declared the affected districts, as “calamity hit areas.”

The government of Pakistan has appealed the international community, NGOs and charity groups to help Pakistan to support the relief and rehabilitation work.

The Pakistan Army and various groups have been deployed to help the government to search out and help stranded people to get to dry places.

“However millions are still trapped and an acute shortage of drinking water, food has been reported. Diseases have been broken out in the affected areas and desperate people are waiting for help under the open sky,” Anwer told the ASSIST News Service. “To make matters worse, more rains and flooding has been forecast.

“Pakistani Christian ministries, churches and nonprofit organizations are planning to support the affected people with relief work and by organizing prayer services for the flood-hit people.”

FCF told ANS that it has learned that the United States government has pledged US$10 million in aid, while China, the UK, Australia and other countries, have also announced relief aid. The US had pledged to distribute over 62,000 meals via a US airlift.

“Christian women, youth and children have fervently requested FCF to convey their appeals to the international Christian brothers and sisters to support suffering those Pakistan,” Anwer said.

FCF sources have discovered that among that amongst the 2.5 million people affected by the floods, there are about 30,000 are Christians who are still waiting for emergency relief.

For more information, go to: http://fcfpk.yolasite.com

A story written by journalist Dibin Samuel, says that a Pakistani bishop has warned that Christians in Pakistan are "missing out on flood aid."
 

The Bishop of Peshawar

Samuel said that the Right Reverend Humphrey Sarfraz Peters, Bishop of Peshawar in Pakistan, has warned that Christians there will receive “hardly anything” from the aid packages being distributed among victims of the country’s worst flooding in 80 years.

He stated that the warning from the Bishop “came one day after the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), an alliance of aid agencies including World Vision and Christian Aid, launched a major appeal for donations to help victims of the floods.”

At least 1,600 people have died in the floods, while millions more are in need of aid. Bishop Peters said many Christians had lost everything.

“Our Christians, who are already deprived and marginalized, are in pathetic conditions. They have lost almost everything in their houses; they could only save their lives,” the Bishop was quoted as saying.

“Soon after the emergency phase that might last for a couple of months, the most important will be the rehabilitation.

“We are sure that some countries will come forward with aid packages, but hardly anything will reach the minority Christians. Do keep us in your special prayers.”

Christians make up less than 3 per cent of the population in majority-Muslim Pakistan and are often excluded from anything more than menial employment, meaning that the majority of them live in extreme poverty.

Dan Wooding, 69, is an award winning British journalist now living in Southern California with his wife Norma, to whom he has been married for 46 years. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service (ANS). He was, for ten years, a commentator, on the UPI Radio Network in Washington, DC., and now hosts the weekly “Front Page Radio” show on KWVE in Southern California and which is also carried on the Calvary Radio Network throughout the United States. The program is also aired in Great Britain on Calvary Chapel Radio UK. Wooding is also a regular contributor to The Weekend Stand on the Crawford Broadcasting Network, and a host for His Channel Live, which is carried via the Internet to some 192 countries. He is the author of some 44 books. Two of the latest include his autobiography, “From Tabloid to Truth”, which is published by Theatron Books. To order a copy, press this link. Wooding, who was born in Nigeria of British missionary parents, has also recently released his first novel “Red Dagger” which is available here